Remote Access to WindowsHow to access Maple and MATLAB from home.

The School of Mathematics and Statistics provides a remote login service to one of its Windows
Terminal Servers. It is available for all students
and can be accessed from anywhere within New Zealand with a
broadband internet connection.

What applications and services are available?

There are licenses for users to run various applications, including MATLAB,
Maple, R and SAS.

When you login you will find your usual network shares are available such as
P: drive, U: drive etc.

What are the limitations of this service?

Microsoft Office is not available on this service.

This service is only available from within New Zealand.

No local devices or resources such as printers, local hard drives, the local
clipboard etc. are able to the used on the remote session. If you need to
transfer files from your local machine to the remote session you can
FTP to your My
Documents (P:).

Printing is disabled on this server. This is to prevent people printing to
printers within the School when they are in remote locations.

Connections that remain idle for two hours will be automatically logged out.
Disconnected sessions will be logged out after five minutes.

How do I connect?

Windows

Windows systems come with a utility (mstsc.exe) to connect to Terminal Servers.

Using a configuration file

Double-click on the downloaded file to open the Remote Desktop Connection client.

If you are prompted to enter your credentials, just type in your user name as the
server is set to request a user name and password upon connection (i.e. it won’t trust
what is sent on the initial connection).

You should now be present with the familiar Log On to Windows screen.

Log on as you would normally.

Use the connection bar at the top of your screen to switch between your local
machine and the remote session.

Apple Mac OS X

Linux / UNIX

You will need to install rdesktop, FreeRDP or one
of the GUI front–ends to rdesktop such as tsclient, grdesktop or krdesktop. I'm
sure you'll find one that suits you.

Once installed please use the instructions as outlined for Manual settings in Windows XP, 2003 Server, and Vista.

Where can I connect to the server from?

Anywhere! As long as you have a reasonably fast internet connection (dial-up will
in most cases be too slow and unresponsive). If the School of Mathematics and Statistics
computer labs are full or closed (between 11pm and 7am), you can connect to this
server from any PC or Mac on campus, including the machines in the Crypt, Loft
and Engineering computer labs. Just follow the instructions outlined above.
You can also connect to the Terminal Server (mathlab.canterbury.ac.nz) from
a UCwireless connection.

How much does this service cost me?

Nothing! The School pays for the traffic generated by the remote sessions
(Note: This doesn't cover any charges you may incur from your ISP).
However if you are browsing external web sites from within the remote session your
usercode will still be charged for any traffic generated at the
normal rates.
The My Documents (P:
Drive) from home, provided by ICTS is also a free at the time of writing.

Tips for improved performance

RDP is a fairly light-weight protcol. However there are a few things you can do
speed up your communication with the Terminal Server.

Close or restrict other bandwidth hungry applications on your PC while
running a remote session, such as peer-to-peer applications.

Optimise the settings in the Remote Desktop Client to reduce bandwidth. The following setting are from the Windows XP Remote Desktop Client (mstsc.exe):

Set the desktop display size to a smaller resolution such as 800x600.

Reduce the colour depth to 8bit (256 colours).

Set the remote computer sound to stay at the remote computer.

Turn off the following in the 'Experience' tab; desktop background; font smoothing; desktop composition; show window contents while dragging; menu and window animation; themes